Come on down: Why Australians loved our greatest TV game shows
WHERE would Aussie television be without game shows? From The Price is Right and Pick A Box to Sale of the Century, they’ve been a constant since TV began in 1956. Take a look back at some of our favourites and what made them so popular.
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WHERE would Australian television be without game shows?
From The Price is Right and Pick A Box to Grant Denyer’s Family Feud, The Chase Australia and Eddie McGuire’s Millionaire Hot Seat, Australian TV networks have mined a rich vein of ratings gold thanks to the humble game show.
These days, the genre has launched into a form of parody thanks to Tom Gleeson’s ABC gem, Hard Quiz.
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Game shows are one of Aussie TV’s most basic elements, and involve audiences like no other genre.
Here, television historian Chris Keating examines what makes game shows work and lists a few of his favourites.
WHAT MAKES A GREAT GAME SHOW?
Chris Keating says audience participation is the key to game show success.
“It’s the whole playing at home thing, the vicarious thrill. You can sit there and you know the answer, the person on the screen doesn’t know the answer and you scream the answer at the TV,” Keating says.
“That’s a huge factor in it — the public knowing the answer and playing along at home. Audience participation. It gets them tuning back in day after day.”
“They have been the backbone of the industry from 1956, for necessity in the early days because it was a cheap, easy way to produce local content.”
Game shows have accompanied nightly news programs for decades, as a lead-in to the news and evening programs, or to help viewers relax after the news, Keating says.
“I guess they’re an antidote to the news in a lot of ways. People see a lot of miserable, depressing things on the news and they need a break, something to get away from that, something lighthearted, and bang. There’s Grant Denyer or Tony Barber to do the job for them” he says.
GAME SHOWS ARE GOLD LOGIE MAGNETS
Grant Denyer’s recent TV Gold Logie for his work on Family Feud is no fluke.
Keating says personalities have won Gold Logies for their game show work, have hosted game shows in the past or went on to host game shows later in their careers.
They include Graham Kennedy, Bert Newton, Daryl Somers, Rove McManus, Tony Barber, Bob Dyer, Tommy Hanlon Junior and Ernie Sigley.
CHRIS KEATING’S FAVOURITES
BLANKETY BLANKS
Chris Keating rates Blankety Blanks, aired on the 0-10 Network in the late 1970s, as his “best and most enjoyable game show” because of the comedic genius of host Graham Kennedy, which won him a Gold Logie.
The format wasn’t new. The 0-10 Network hosted the first outing of the format, The Match Game, in the late 1960s.
“They decided to do it again, and Graham heard about it when he was doing a spot on Personality Squares or Celebrity Squares, and (producers) Grundy’s dived on that,” Keating says.
“The format isn’t that great but the way Kennedy interacted with the contestants, and particularly the panel, was TV gold. You can watch it today and it’s still funny.
“It was brilliant. Foxtel was running it about 10 years ago. Where else are you going to see repeats of a 20 or 30-year-old game show? It’s just unheard of.”
SALE OF THE CENTURY
“I would regard it as the greatest based on its longevity,” Keating says.
The show started on Seven around 1970 as Temptation, an afternoon quiz show produced for Perth and with Perth radio announcer Tony Barber as host before it went national.
“It was so successful that it was given a later evening timeslot as The Great Temptation and it rated its little socks off for a couple of years, and then they made the mistake of putting it up against Number 96 and that was the end of that, unfortunately,” Keating says.
“Barber was hosting Family Feud in Perth when he heard the format was returning to TV. He made sure he got an audition, and he was in,” Keating says.
Sale of the Century kicked off in July 1980, produced at GTV-9 in Melbourne with Barber as host before Glenn Ridge took over from 1991 until the end of the show’s run in November 2001. That’s 4610 episodes over 22 seasons.
Barber and Ridge were accompanied by five co-hosts — Victoria Nicholls, Delvene Delaney, Jo Bailey, Nicky Buckley and Karina Brown.
It returned to Nine as Temptation, with Ed Phillips and Livinia Nixon. The duo squeezed out another 535 episodes before production ceased in November 2007.
THE PRICE IS RIGHT
“The Price is Right is one of those evergreen formats. It’s the evergreen format that just keeps coming back, and technically it’s our longest running format because it started in 1957 and had had various incarnations since,” Keating says.
Early versions of The Price is Right aired on ATN-7 in Sydney, hosted by actor Bruce Beeby, from 1957, in Melbourne on GTV-9 in 1958 and in Melbourne version on Seven in 1963.
The modern Price is Right format surfaced on the 0-10 Network, produced at ATV-0 in Melbourne and hosted by Garry Meadows from 1973 to 1974.
“That was the first national version, and it was very successful too,” Keating says.
Ian Turpie hosted another revival, The New Price is Right, produced by HSV-7 from 1981 to 1985, and a short-lived The Price is Right return on Ten in 1989.
Larry Emdur headlined Nine’s last two cracks at The Price is Right — from 1993 to 1998 and 2003 to 2006 — then took the show to Seven in 2012.
“Larry Emdur did very well with both versions on Nine, and it gave him the national profile that has put him where he is now. He is one of those guys you can drop into any format, and he will do a creditable job hosting,” Keating says.
FAMILY FEUD
Again based on an American format, Tony Barber was the original compere in Australia.
“Family Feud began in Perth in 1977 as a Perth-only show. I think it was coming out of TVW-7, and they did it for the first 18 months,” Keating says.
“Tony left in 1980 to go to Sale and Daryl Somers took over. He hosted it until the end of ’83 and in 1984 it was hosted by a former pop singer named Sandy Scott.
“That was in the dying throes of the program, then it came back in 1989 with Rob Brough on Seven this time.”
John Deeks, the narrator of Seven game shows including The New Price is Right and Wheel of Fortune, got to host the final year of Seven’s Family Feud in 1996.
“Then of course we had Bert’s Family Feud (on Nine in 2006 and 2007) then, more recently, the Grant Denyer version,” Keating says.
“Family Feud is one that I don’t like that much, but it’s very long lived.”
WHEEL OF FORTUNE
Another American-based game show, Wheel of Fortune was produced for the Seven Network in Adelaide for much of its life.
Ernie Sigley started as host from 1981 to 1984 alongside Adriana Xenides. John Burgess took the helm until 1996, when he was dumped as part of a revamp of the show that included relocating production to Sydney.
“Tony Barber then got the job, and there was a huge backlash about Burgess being sacked, so Tony didn’t last long because the audience was taking it out on him, which was unfair, It wasn’t his fault,” Keating says.
Rob Elliott took the wheel from 1997 with Kerry Friend replacing Xenides, who took sick leave, until 1997. Then Sophie Falkiner stepped in alongside Elliott, then (from 2003 to 2005) Steve Oemcke. Larry Emdur was paired with Laura Csortan for the show’s final incarnation with Seven in 2006.
Then, Wheel bobbed up on Nine, produced from Melbourne with Tim Campbell and Kelly Landry in 2008. It didn’t last long.
“Adriana Xenides, of course, was the hostess for most of that run and, at that point, she was the longest running quiz hostess in the world, and I think she may still be,” Keating says.
NAME THAT TUNE/KEYNOTES
Name That Tune started in Sydney in 1956 with TV pioneer Bruce Gyngell as host. A new version, Keynotes, surfaced in Melbourne in 1964 with Alistair McHarg, then as Musical Cashbox on 0-10 in the late-60s. Tony Barber hosted the show as Name That Tune then mid-‘70s before the Keynotes Name was revived again in the 1990s.
“It’s the basic thing of people being able to sing along. There have been a few attempts to refloat it in recent years. They haven’t been successful yet, but I think it will come back,” Keating says.
EARLY GIANTS
Bob Dyer’s Pick A Box, co-hosted with his wife Dolly, was a Seven favourite from the early days of TV, and radio legend Jack Davey had three other quiz shows on Seven — The Dulux Show, The Pressure Pak Show and Give it a Go.
Dyer and Davey were old radio rivals who branched out to the new medium of TV.
“Pick A Box was huge on radio in the 1950s and it translated well to TV. It went from 1957 to 1971, and Bob Dyer got two Gold Logies off the back of it,” Keating says.
“It’s interesting. You couldn’t do it these days because there isn’t the general knowledge now that was required of the contestants.”
Once he retired, Dyer reviewed episodes of the show, destroyed most and kept what he regarded as the best ones for posterity.
“If you watch it, it’s still pretty creaky show you can imagine what the bad ones were like. Conversely, Jack Davey’s quiz shows have stood up really well,” Keating says.
He says Davey was a better ad-libber when interacting with contestants, but Dyer was a showman.
The TV rivalry between the two ended in 1959, when Davey died from lung cancer.
A FEW ODDITIES
GAMBIT
Hosted by Peter Hitchener and Ros Wood, Gambit aired in 1974 and was based on the card game 21, with married couples as contestants. The game surfaced again with Play Your Cards Right, hosted by ‘Ugly’ Dave Gray.
EVERYONE’S TALKING
“Philip Brady had this one in the late-‘60s on Nine, where they would show film clips of people discussing a particular subject and you had to guess what they were talking about. Mmmm. Really? The program had to end because they ran out of clips
from their overseas supplier and couldn’t do any of their own,” Keating says.
HIGH ROLLERS
Aired briefly on Seven in 1975, Keating says the program was “show based around rolling dice, with Garry Meadows and Delvene Delaney”. A game board of prizes corresponded with numbers rolled on the dice.
PRESS YOUR LUCK
“Ian Turpie’s Press Your Luck had a grid with squares and a light would flash around the grid. When the contestant hit the buzzer the light would stop was the prize they got, unless they got a ‘whamee’ and you lost all your points,” Keating says.
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